


Lose my heart on the burning sands

by teskodanceparty



Category: Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Avengers Movies Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe - Always the Opposite Sex, Alternate Universe - Gender Changes, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-04-21
Updated: 2012-04-21
Packaged: 2017-11-04 02:13:40
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,262
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/388565
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/teskodanceparty/pseuds/teskodanceparty
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The last time he let orders take precedent over his emotions where Toni was concerned, he handed over the War Machine to Justin Hammer and wound up hacked by a psychotic Russian scientist.</p><p>The time before that, she was missing for three months in Afghanistan and had to fly out of a terrorist cell's hideout using a suit she made in a cave with a box of scraps.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Lose my heart on the burning sands

The funeral is on a Monday, hours before a board meeting Jim has spent the last week fighting for Toni not to attend. Her suit is charcoal dark, sleek lapels and a perfect silhouette, heels muffled over the grass when they walked from her car to the burial site. He doesn't stop her when she tugs his hand out of his lap, laces their fingers together and squeezes until her knuckles are white.

When Obadiah Stane stands to speak, saying how "Howard was as dear to me as a brother," she digs her nails into the back of his hand hard enough to draw blood. He inhales, sharp and loud, drawing her eye to their hands hanging between them for a moment. She loosens her grip, but only just.

Stane moves to talk to her when everyone starts to disperse, brows drawn and hand out to her, his face utterly sympathetic and there must be something that Jim can't see because Toni glowers, mouth going thin; shoving Stane's hand away and walking fast to the car. Jim has to run to catch up to her.  
  
-  
  
Toni moves to California within the month, dodging Jim's calls for the next seven until its normal, or as close to it as Toni ever gets, so he doesn't think on it. He screens calls from Stane -he's never gotten used to talking to him without a Toni shaped buffer- and a few from Toni's myriad of PA's. He knows that she knows he's joined up right out of college, he almost laughs at the G.I. Joe doll he gets in the mail. He's gone through boot camp, training, a quick fly overseas, and is preparing for another deployment and it's been almost two years since he last saw her. As much as they both try to deny it he's her best friend and she's his; he will miss her.

So he flies out, fully prepared to deal with any number of ridiculous situations she can get them into. He gets a cab to her new address, sits in the car for a full minute in awe of the place because it's only been a few months but it's decked out in 'Toni' from the foundation up.

He knocks before pushing the door open, leaves his bag in the guest room, and heads down to the workshop. He can see Toni through the glass door, sees the line of her back and her hand on her hip, the other holding a phone to her ear, her foot tapping angrily to the rattle of 'highway to hell' that can be heard through the door.

She looks... not different exactly, but there are variations that he isn't used to. Her hair is the longest he's ever seen it, dark strands curling past her elbows. She's thinner too, almost sickly pale and it sends a jolt of something very much like worry through him.

He raps a knuckle on the glass and she spins, mouth an angry line until she sees it's him. She grins than, and it loosens something in his chest, that smile. She finishes her call as she opens the door, tossing the phone over her shoulder with a glare as she tosses out a "Hey Rhodey!" and he pulls her in against his chest. He hums a laugh, smiles into her hair and the smell of electric fire clinging to Toni today.

"You look good, hate to say it, but those military types know how to whip your baby fat into shape." she slurs into the neck of his shirt, pulling back to smile up at him when he jabs a thumb into her side.

His mouth is open, he means to say something, anything really to cut her off before she starts pinching his cheeks and cooing, but he flounders. He's not even sure why, only he's looking into Toni's eyes, closer and more clear than he's seen in years and he wants to kiss her. He's wanted it for a while now and shoved it aside time and time again but-

"God, okay honey bear, you can stop thinking at me any time now." she murmurs. Her fingers are at the back of his neck and she tugs, gentle though he knows she can be anything but. She sighs into it, keeps it chaste and Jim could cry, she's so hesitant until he turns them round and presses her back against the glass.

She sucks and licks at his mouth, bites at his jaw, moans when he moves tighter against her, presses his fingers hard into her hip and open-mouthed kisses to the spot just under her ear. Toni moans, and she already sounds wrecked, looks it too, her cheeks flushed and her eyes fever bright. Her hair is knotted around her face and she smiles a predatory flash of teeth before giving a hop, wrapping her legs around his waist and pushing him to walk backwards into the room.

"Bed?" he breathes against her cheek, feels her shake her head and mutter, "Cot against the far wall. Condoms in the third drawer over."

So he lays her out on the cot that's barely big enough, strips them both and smiles when she grins because, "I'm sorry, don't mistake this for an out, there is no way I want out of this but, god damn you."

"Not all of us can be awake for 3 days and look as good as you do, Toni." he chuckles, mouthing up the line of her neck before tugging at her earlobe with his teeth.

They fuck, slow and desperate and so, so good and it's not perfect, it's not, but Toni's eyes fly open as she comes, falling apart under him with a sob and a smile and _that_ is. He drops a hand to rub his thumb in circles over a spot on her hip that's beginning to bruise, remembers suddenly that she hadn't cried once through her parent's funeral. Probably hadn't since the day she showed up at his apartment, but she's sniffling like she might do it now.

He rolls onto his side, curled against her back, holds her and murmurs nonsense about building flight simulators with her until there are tears tracked down her face and neck and she falls asleep smiling.  
  
-  
  
Jim has been all over the Middle East by the time Toni takes step one in the sandbox. He knows it's a bad idea, has had long, in depth conversations with Pepper more than once about how bad an idea it is.

But Toni, being Toni, steamrolls right over their sound protests and obvious worry. She's still three hours late to her flight -strolls up the stairs still smelling like sex and grease from the woman she picked up in Vegas and the morning after, her hair perfectly messy in dark waves down her back- and when she leans forward with her chopsticks to steal from his bowl of rice, he can make out bite marks on her collar bone in the shadow of her shirt collar.

She's changed a lot in the ten plus years it's been since that day, and Jim hates that he thinks of it like that sometimes, like it's so much more than any other day they spent as teenagers terrorizing a Chuck-E-Cheese -she wanted to win a plush dragon the size of a toddler and Chuck-E-Cheese now has a lifetime ban on them both nationwide; they aren't allowed in most laser tag places anywhere in California- because it's wasn't even the first time they slept together, let alone more important than all the time they've spent together with their clothes on. And as much as she's changed, she hasn't at all, drunk and pressed against his side, her head on his shoulder and her feet in his lap as music blares.

"You don't have to be like me, but you can be more than what you are!" he shouts over the bass rattling his bones, the saki bottle room temperature and gripped tight in his hand.

"Will you forgive me if I'm a little distracted right now?" Toni says at the same time, eyes avoiding his and he knows evasive maneuvering when he sees it.

Her stewardesses start to dance and his protest is lost against the collar of her silk shirt when she shifts to press her mouth to his temple.

She kisses him, slow and wet and hungry, smiling that sharp enough to bleed on stretch of red smeared lips against his cheek, whispering, "You're good enough for us both, Colonel."  
  
-  
  
The presentation goes off without a hitch, because of course it does. He hides a laugh in a cough as she staggers from the dust blown up by the missile.

"To peace!" She offers, raising her glass of more scotch than ice and flipping him off with one hand, pulling her phone from her pocket with the other.

He makes to get in the humvee with her, laughs it off when she directs him towards the hum-drum-vee, and regrets letting her do it as soon as the shit starts flying.

He knows in the back of his mind that Toni can fire a gun, that one of the few good things she gained from Howard was the need to test it, try it, improve it before whatever 'it' was hit the market. Toni can fire a gun, has had Happy teaching her to box since the day she hired him, and has an IQ that should have kept her out of harms way.

Instead she crawls out of the fun-vee and grabs a gun when every other person would have curled into a ball and waited to die or for the enemy to run out of weapons first.

He catches out of the corner of his eye, as he climbs up to take over the .50 cal, Toni screaming, anger and frustration bleeding into her voice as she pulls the trigger and finds her gun is empty, tossing it away. Her eyes are wide and finally -what took her so long to realize this was the reaction warranted- scared, her mouth forming his name and he tries to tell her to stay there before she's turning and running.  
  
  
When he regains consciousness -he doesn't remember passing out, but he wakes up and his hearing is off so he knows it happened- Toni is gone and there are a dozen families who lost someone far more beloved than she ever managed to be.  
  
-  
  
That doesn't stop Toni Stark's funeral from being the hideous cluster fuck of an event Jim knew it would be as soon as he saw Pepper, freckles standing out against how pale she is. He can see why Toni was so fond of her as soon as she opens her mouth to greet him, nodding curtly, shaking his hand and smoothing down the back of her skirt. The snarl in her voice as she talks to Obadiah Stane is poorly concealed and barely covers the way her voice wavers, but it's just as fierce when she looks up at him.

"Don't give up on Toni, Jim," Pepper whispers, fingers digging where she's holding his wrist, "This was Mr. Stane's idea, don't give up her."  
  
-  
  
They went to prom together, did the limo and corsage and the whole thing that would have gone off without a hitch if he had asked anyone else. Except...

Except Jim had promised her when they met -ten years old and Toni a few years younger, burned finger tips and already so big for someone so tiny- and he keeps his promises.

"What are you lookin' at?" Toni had asked, tried to adjust her dress to look a little more presentable because she snuck a flask of Howard's least favorite whiskey and they spent the time they weren't dancing or drinking, necking in an alcove off of the banquet hall.

"I'm looking at you." He said, smiling slow as he took her hand and led her down the hall to the room she'd gotten earlier.

(Jim knows they both grew to loath this exchange, how they relive it and it's never meant exactly the same thing and hurts just as much as that first time.)  
  
-  
  
There are three pictures in simple black frames on a mantle over an empty fireplace in Jim's apartment.

In the one farthest to the right: he's talking and smiling; one hand gesturing to whoever it was behind the camera, the other arm around a 17 year old Toni's waist. She's smiling as well; bright and open and only half for the camera, her body turned towards Jim's in the matching cowboy outfits she'd insisted on three days before the party the picture was taken at. Her visible hand is curled around the collar of his shirt, the buttons on their matching shirts are real pearl, boots a soft worn leather. There were spurs too, he remembers searching for a band-aid when Toni ran a finger over hers too fast as she sat on a table next to him, hissing a curse, pouting up at him when she asked him to kiss it better and he refused flat out before throwing her head back to laugh.

It gets dropped behind a pile of books Pepper recommended he read but he never has the time to when Toni goes missing -not dead, he knows the statistics, feels every damn day tick by and the chances dwindling, but it's _Toni_ , she can't be--  
  
-  
  
He can do this usually, the bob and weave of the sometimes-more-than-friendship they've had since they met, but there's something raw in the way she's holding herself, the way she speaks and he won't push more than he knows he needs to.

It was three months though. Three months and then another one spent in military hospitals she threatened to raze to splinters and ash when she was well enough to move. Interrogation rooms where she sat, face blank and more telling than anything she could have said would be.

"Jim you're staring." She whispers, lips dry, an eye cracked open to look at him.

"Toni, you're-" an idiot, he wants to say, brilliant, so god damn lucky, but most of all _alive_.

He doesn't, but she smiles like she knows what he means -her lip splitting open at the corner and bleeding slow- and holds her hand out to him. He holds it tight between his palms, traces the calluses and new burn scars and shakes his head and laughs when she says, "Yes. Yes, I most certainly am."

-

Jim stops by to check up on her, a week after the debacle with Vanko and Justin Hammer at Stark Expo. The speaker system isn't blaring Black Sabbath through the house and he's as surprised by that as well as the fact that the house is empty and mostly clean. Clean for Toni, at least.

"Jarvis, could you give me an idea of what's going on here?" He asks, stepping around an overturned table. He had left, had fought her because no one else would or could but he hadn't relished doing it any more than Toni had. There's no answer from the AI they've all grown used to and it quickens his pace, nearly running down to the garage.

She's swinging a sledge hammer, breathing like she's fighting for something and looks ready to take his head off. The glass walls, windows of every one of her cars, and the TV in the corner have been blown out.

"What do you need Rhodes, I'm a little busy?" she says. He frowns, steps over chunks of cement and pats Dummy on a mechanical finger as he asks, "Toni what are you-"

"Remodeling-"

"Toni-"

"Out with the old-

"Okay Toni."

"All that turn a new leaf-type shit."

"And Jarvis being down?"

"Muted. Jarvis say hello, baby."

"Hello, baby." Jarvis sighs as much as an artificial intelligence system that runs everything in a genius, billionaire, playboy -she refuses to be called playgirl, snarls and fights and once fired half the board at SI for insinuating worse-, philanthropist's life.

"Oh, stop! You'll make me blush." she says and her laugh is more a bark, her smile sharp and angry.

Her face is free of makeup, of even the blood red lipstick she dons more often than not now. She looks younger without it, and every single one of her thirty seven years all at once.

"Pepper left me." She says, lifts the hammer and swings until she can't anymore.  
  
-  
  
If there's a reoccurring notch on the scarred and pitted surface of Toni Stark's bed posts, it's Jim, and they both know it. Pepper knows it because she's a friend and has kept Toni's life running like a well-oiled machine for nearly a decade. Happy knows it because he's Happy and seems to know everything. Stane knew, though Toni still has nightmares that wake him with her screaming his name, he's dead now and Jim can't bring himself to care about the opinions of this particular dead man.

"Fuck it, fire everything!" He hears Iron Man yell and if he wasn't in the War Machine he might have been blinded by the flash of light. As it is, he throws the faceplate back down and curses, mutters override codes at Jarvis under his breath as he flies in her direction and it's too little, too god damn late. The arc reactor is overloaded and it works, of course it does, but it leaves Toni in a metal coffin and she's falling, falling, falling with the largest doom bot landing half on top of her.

"James?" Natasha begins and he ignores her, ignores it when Captain America tries to draw him back into the still on-going battle around them, fires a repulsor blast at the bot looming over Hawkeye and hopes it helped because he's not stopping.

The last time he let orders take precedent over his emotions where Toni was concerned, he handed over the War Machine to Justin Hammer and wound up hacked by a psychotic Russian scientist.

The time before that, she was missing for three months in Afghanistan and had to fly out of a terrorist cell's hideout using a suit she made in a cave with a box of scraps.

He ignores orders and flies to Toni, gets one of his gauntlets off after he's blasted the bot off of her and before he lands shakily. Falls to his knees and hits the catch -on the side, just under her breast because she thought it'd be a laugh- to release the armor. Watches it fall away and pretends the blue-white light of the arc reactor isn't flickering in her chest.

"God damn it, Toni." He mutters and knows the robotic lilt given to him in the suit barely masks frustration.

"Forgive my interruption Colonel Rhodes, but I have an incoming call from Captain Rogers for you." Jarvis says, hesitant and soft.

"Fuck," He grits out, pulls off his helmet and uses the hand not incased in metal to check for a pulse. "Fuck," He says again when he finds one, thready but there, "Okay Jarvis, can you put him through and get a medic from SHIELD here?"

"Of course Colonel." Jarvis says, and puts Rogers through.

"Jim!? Jim, is she okay?" Steve is shouting, because this is Steve, Jim can hear the difference and he sighs.

"Yeah, Cap, she's," She stirs, groans and tries to sit up and seems to think better of it.

"She's alive for now. I make no promises once Pepper hears about this." He adds, smiles just to have something to do with his face. He smiles for real when she sighs and nuzzles her head into the hand he has running through her hair. In the light of the streetlamp that somehow survived the latest attack from Dr. Doom he can see that she hasn't dyed her hair in a while, grey coming in at the temples that Jim's always been oddly fond of.

Captain America is running towards them, shield glinting bright and in the dark, cowl thrown back and his face all serious and quiet fury.

"What are Iron Man's injuries?" He asks, demands in the voice that he uses for command. Toni stirs when she hears him, groans and coughs and tries to sit up again but he stops her with a look.

"Hey Wonder Boy, Honey Bunch of Oats, how are my two favorite boys?" Toni mumbles, Cap frowns but doesn't move from where he's kneeling next to them.

"Probably bruised and cracked ribs, and a concussion, on top of lack of sleep and food, as always." Jim says, his free hand rubbing at his jaw. Toni's face scrunches up, protest probably on the tip of her tongue before she passes out.

"Is it always this exciting?" Jim says as he stands, waving over the SHIELD trained medics.

Cap snorts a laugh and runs a hand through his hair. "Only on days ending in 'Y,' Colonel  
  
-  
  
He's in the shower in his room at the mansion, scrubbing grit from his skin because thirty plus years later and he's still following Toni around when he can, cleaning up her messes.

  
"Rhodey, can I come in?" He hears her ask over the sound of water pounding down his back. He grunts a response, sees her slip through the door and lock it behind her. She's still sporting bruises, but they've mostly faded, her two bruised ribs giving her grief when she pulls herself onto the counter even though she knows she shouldn't.

"What's up, Tone-bone?" He asks and winces when she laughs.

"Yeah, I don't know why I just said that." He mumbled, rinsing shampoo from his eyes.

"Because you love me obviously, gummy bear." She chuckles. He can see her kicking her feet, looking up at the ceiling and humming what sounds like 'Star-Spangled Man'

"Hey, so, Steve thinks we're goin' steady." She says as soon as he shuts the water off. She hands him a towel and avoids his eyes as she does.

"Huh," Jim says for lack of something better to say. He dries off, wraps a towel around his waist and makes his way into his room.

It's fairly empty, he spends more time crashing on the cot in Toni's workshop when she won't leave it or on the couch in the main living room when she will. He can see why Steve would think that. All the free time Jim gets is generally spent keeping Toni out of trouble, getting her to sleep for more than two hours at a time, and keeping her from being murdered by Natasha. Most of those lead to Toni hanging onto him like a koala as he half-heartedly tries to get free and fights the urge to tell Clint about the time she lost a game of beer pong against the guy who invented Napster just to get her off of him.

"Are we?" Toni asks from where she's leaning against the the wall. Her voice is small, suddenly and her attempt at nonchalance has them both wincing.

"We," he starts and sighs, pulling on a clean pair of briefs before sitting on the edge of the bed, "We haven't done anything like we were 'goin' steady' since before Iron Man."

"Yeah, that's what I told him and after he got over giving me that 'Your life choices make me a sad puppy' look, he brought to my attention that back in his day people didn't have to be having sex to be dating." Toni sits beside him, pulls her legs up and crosses them, leans her head on his shoulder and smiles.

"I totally, uh, get it if that's something you're not okay with, trust me. I do, if I were you, I'd have run screaming fucking decades ago." She says.

Jim is hit with anger, -sudden and bright behind his eyes- directed at everyone who ever made her feel like this, made the great Toni Stark, war monger turned superhero, genius billionaire philanthropist feel like the scared girl with burns on her hands, fighting her whole life to be considered good enough.

"Toni, that's one of the stupidest fucking things I've heard, and I've seen you try to talk Dummy through doing gymnastics drunk." He says, smiles and bumps his elbow against her side.

"I have no recollection of that whatsoever, but I'm gonna go ahead and blame Dummy for that one." She cracks a smile and it almost reaches her eyes.

"Yeah." He says, pulls her against his side and presses his nose into her hair. She smells like she hasn't been down to the workshop yet, and he wants to ask about that but waits.

"Yeah, what now?" she breathes against his collarbone.

"We're going steady, genius," He rolls his eyes and presses a kiss to her temple.

"Oh, uh-"

"If you want to." He adds. He fully expects her to run, hide in her machines and apologize by upgrading the War Machine's entire system.

Instead she grins, bright white and a little filthy, licks her lips and asks, "Only if we're counting this as whatever number of dates normal people wait before putting out."

"We're getting Chinese when we're done." He says.

"Of course, sweetums," Toni murmurs, mouths at the line of his jaw as she climbs into his lap.

"From The Scarlet Dragon," He says, kisses the corner of her mouth where it's lifted in a smile.

"Duh, what kinda girl do you think I am?"

**Author's Note:**

> title from The Stooges


End file.
